Introduction
A paper was published in The Lancet on October 22nd, 2020, called "
The temporal association of introducing and lifting non-pharmaceutical interventions with the time-varying reproduction number (R) of SARS-CoV-2: a modelling study across 131 countries" (Ref 1).
That's the academic way of saying "The impact of different lockdown measures in 131 countries."
This was a timely study, as England is due to join the rest of the UK in lockdown from 5th November and measures are being re-introduced in a number of other countries. The UK has a particular knack for inventing words to avoid calling lockdowns "lockdowns". We have Levels 0-4 in Scotland, Tiers 1-3 currently in England, a 'partial' lockdown in Northern Ireland and a complete lockdown in Wales, but it's called a Firebreak. The UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has said of the latest measures "
We are not going back to the full-scale lockdown of March and April... But from Thursday the basic message is the same: 'Stay at home. Protect the NHS. And save lives'." While other countries are variously locking down and opening up, this study looked at what it called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to understand the impact of introducing and lifting different restrictions.
This was a two part modelling study. While we have often said that models are only as good as their assumptions - and this is true - the first part of this study modelled things that had happened and the second part was then an "ad hoc analysis", which tried to estimate what would have the greatest effect given the findings from part 1. Part 1, if not Part 2, could be of significant value because
it modelled historical events rather than predicting future events based on assumptions.
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